This is a must-read article over at Evolution News. I’m just going to quote the beginning, but you really need to read it!

Excerpt:

“A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God.” Guess who said that?

The speaker was none other than the world’s most eminent cosmologist, Stephen Hawking. Was he attacking proponents of intelligent design? No; he was lamenting his latest birthday presents.

For Hawking’s 70th birthday celebration, Lisa Grossman wrote in New Scientist, cosmologists got together to discuss the “State of the Universe.” Hawking prepared a recorded statement for the occasion that included the comment quoted above. Good thing he didn’t have to attend. His friends gave him “the worst presents ever,” Grossman noted. Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University presented evidence that “the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator.”

The article explains why none of the proposals for an eternal universe are workable: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and the “cosmic egg” hypothesis. In each case, the mathematics and the laws of physics can’t eliminate the need for a starting point. This forces the community of naturalistic astronomers to face what they have been trying to avoid: a beginning.

The article is headlined, “Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event.” Astronomers wanted to “dodge this problem” Grossman explains, but they couldn’t. What problem, exactly? An editorial in the same issue of New Scientist is forthright: it’s titled, “The Genesis Problem.” Grossman writes that the three alternative models provided hope for a universe without a starting point, but “that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead.”

The point to ponder is how this relates to the intelligent design controversy. Opponents of ID routinely argue that a designer for the universe would necessarily be a supernatural God. That makes ID religious by definition, they say. Well, who is talking about the supernatural now? Guess what: Stephen Hawking does not work for Discovery Institute. Nor does Lisa Grossman, Alexander Vilenkin or the organizers of Hawking’s birthday bash.

Please read the rest. The part I excerpted was not the best part. The last half of the article is very very snarky!

Oh, if only more Christians knew the blessings and opportunities of living in a time when the progress of science has basically made atheism into the intellectual equivalent of flat-Earthism. This is our time, and we need to be out there studying what science reveals about the universe we live in and then using it!